


the only one I yearn for

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, No AIDA, One-Sided Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, The Framework Universe (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23634058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Jemma's been summoned to see the Doctor.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Comments: 6
Kudos: 69





	the only one I yearn for

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "just a dream" by Nelly.
> 
> If you skimmed on by the tags up there, it'll probably help in reading this to know there's no AIDA in this version of the Framework.

As the lift rises and Jemma’s stomach remains firmly on the sixth floor while the rest of her climbs ever higher, she tells herself it’s quite normal to be feeling distress. Most people, she imagines, would feeling anxiety after being summoned to their superior’s (or, in Jemma’s case, her superior’s superior’s superior’s) office in the middle of the work day.

Of course, most people don’t work for the Doctor.

She’s all too aware of the guards escorting her, as well as the many floors separating her from any sort of help should things go poorly.

But they will not. Whatever this is about—and she’s sure it’s nothing—it will not end poorly for her or anyone.

And, if it will, best to put on a blameless face. First rule of working in Hydra: if you feel guilty, you will appear guilty, and you will soon _be_ guilty by Hydra’s all-knowing decree.

That in mind, she straightens her shoulders, lifts her chin, and does her best to paste on a pleasant smile. After all, she’s known the Doctor since they were children. Not young children, mind you, they were practically adults, but the point is that before he was one of Hydra’s most powerful agents, he was just another of her peers at the Academy. Nothing to be afraid of.

The lift dings—somewhat ominously, she thinks, and wonders if they alter the tone of the thing for the upper levels—and the guards move as one, escorting her directly ahead, past further layers of security, past the receptionist with the practiced _I see nothing_ air about her, and into the lion’s den.

“Sir,” the lead guard says, somewhat stiffly. Porter, his name is, and his hand is around her arm, guiding as much as restraining her. Though she doesn’t much see the point in the latter; at this level, there’s quite literally no way out of the building unless she plans on going out a window.

The thought is meant to be a private little joke with herself, but rather than bolstering her spirits, it leaves her with a rush of unexpected nausea as she envisions herself dramatically leaping through a pane of glass.

And that leaves her struggling to find her smile as the Doctor himself emerges. The room is quite impressive but between the dark columns and the imposing sculptures that dominate the space, it’s difficult to get a real feel for where anything is or if this is even an office at all. For all she knows he just walked out of thin air on the other side of that hissing hydra statue.

His own smile falls the moment he lays eyes on them. “What are you doing?”

The trouble with knowing him since their Academy days is that she can’t hide behind the little lies she tells her fellow scientists. _He must be having an off day_ or _he’s just trying to frighten you_ and _he has a reputation to maintain, it’s nothing to worry over_ all sound well and good to her coworkers whenever the Doctor makes a visit down to six, but she knows it’s all bollocks.

Even at the Academy, he was always somewhat off, his good moods evaporating into defensive attacks at the drop of a hat, and his rise to power has done nothing to cure him of his mercurial tendencies. If anything, she suspects it’s made it _worse_ as now, instead of seeing his behavior result in ended friendships, it’s rewarded with frightened subordinates.

Porter stiffens beside her. “I- we were told you wanted to see-”

The Doctor rolls his eyes. “Yes, to _see_ Agent Simmons, not to have her dragged in here at gunpoint! What is wrong with you people?”

He comes forward to pointedly take Jemma’s arm from Porter’s grasp. Porter gives her a squeeze before letting her go.

“You’re dismissed,” the Doctor says. He doesn’t look back at the guards, but Jemma does. She catches Porter’s eye, hoping to silently communicate that _everything is fine_ and he should just _not do anything_ , but the meaningful way he nods his farewell before following the others out leaves her thinking he’s most definitely going to do something. Damn.

Past the hydra, the office opens up into a wider, more open space. The traditional desk sits at the far end, large and imposing, but ahead of it, in a sunken area that gives off an air of intimacy out of line with the cold, suffocating décor, are couches and a wet bar. In the middle of them is another sculpture—this one of an eagle struggling in the grip of a python—carved so that a sheet of glass can sit on top and act as a coffee table.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you,” the Doctor says, guiding her to this area with an eager sort of enthusiasm.

She could have excused his pulling her away from the guards—he’s never made a secret of his feelings on Hydra’s (or even SHIELD’s when it was still that) brightest having to share space with ops types—but needing her? Touching her? Not simply to drag her along but _gently_?

He doesn’t like her. He did, long ago. At the Academy, they were once paired on a project and discovered that their methods of thinking complemented one another quite well, resulting in a propulsion system which Hydra is still using variations on to this day. After that, their professors paired them whenever possible. The partnership always resulted in exciting developments and stellar marks, but those were paltry rewards for the task of working with him.

A year before graduation, at her quarterly review, her adviser let slip SHIELD was planning on continuing the partnership beyond graduation, looking to assign them to not only the same base but the same _lab_ so that they could keep churning out new advancements. Before the meeting was done, Jemma told her adviser of her hopes of a field assignment. Though she believes they did everything possible—both above and below board—to deter her, she achieved her field certification and was assigned, alone, to an outpost that would make the fastidious Leopold Fitz break out in hives.

She doesn’t think he’s ever forgiven her for that.

“Really?” she asks. “Do you need my help- I mean, my- my assistance with anything?” She winces at her own misstep—the Doctor doesn’t need anyone’s help, certainly not that of a low-level medic—and hopes she recovered well enough.

He doesn’t seem to notice her slip. He pauses beside one of the couches, almost on the verge of sitting them both on it, and looks back. He cranes his neck, swaying from one side to another to see past the many hydra heads. “Are they gone?” he asks.

She looks over her shoulder, unsure who he could mean. The guards would have to be suicidal to have disobeyed such a direct order from him so unless there was someone else in the room…

Apparently satisfied, he turns his attention back to her. She holds her breath. He’s never smiled at her like that before. She hasn’t seen him smile _period_ since the day she began working for him, when he discovered she’d been “smart enough to choose the right side,” and even that was nothing like this. It’s open and, dare she say, warm. Not at all like the fearsome Doctor at all.

And then, before she can figure what it might mean, he attacks her.

All right, maybe he doesn’t _attack_ her. Were it anyone else, she would consider what he’s doing a hug. But coming from him? She has no idea what it’s supposed to be.

His arms are tight around her, pressing her chest to his. He gives her a squeeze—so very different from the reassuring way Porter squeezed her arm just a moment ago—and turns his face into the curve on her neck on a sigh. And that … that she thinks she can understand.

“Sorry,” he says, pulling back. But not stepping back. His hands linger—on her shoulders and arms—and he smiles that warm smile again. “I guess that seemed a little weird, huh?”

“Yes,” she says stiffly. “A little.”

He lets out a breath like a laugh and—finally—moves away to the wet bar. “I was just so glad to see you. I know that doesn’t make any sense—we probably saw each other just yesterday, right?—but it will, I promise.” He looks up from pouring a second glass of whiskey. “Trust me, you’re not gonna want to be strictly sober for this, Simmons.”

She drags in a deep breath, using the familiar action to focus her thoughts. She has been summoned to her superior’s (superior’s superior’s) private office, where they are utterly alone, and he believes what’s to come will be easier on her if she’s drunk. No, he’s making perfect sense. Perfect, terrible sense.

He returns with the drinks and holds hers out. He’s right that it would be easier. In fact, he might have been kind enough to add a little something extra—perhaps from the labs on twelve—to make her forget what’s to come. She thinks she ought to take it, make things easier on herself.

But she doesn’t want to make it easier on _him_. So she does the monumentally stupid thing and ignores the drink in favor of saying, “Ward.”

The Doctor blinks, nonplussed. “What about him?” He asks the question with such disgust, it makes her want to laugh.

“I wasn’t referencing Agent Ward—though I suppose in a way I was—I was correcting you.” And that’s another stupid thing. Who in their right mind would ever correct the Doctor, let alone admit to it. “My name,” she adds when he doesn’t seem to understand. “I’ve been Agent Ward for many years now, it’s not like you to forget.”

She really can’t help the insult. He’s never approved of her marriage to an operative. She suspects he tells himself she went into the field for the sole purpose of finding herself a strong, capable husband to take care of her so that she could squander her genius with an undemanding assignment doing agent physicals. He has never once, since she began her current assignment, failed to say her married name with disdain. That he’d refuse to use it now, when he’s planning on violating that union, is adding insult to injury.

“You’re-” The drinks slip from his grasp. They both leap back, but the impact never comes. Somehow, the drinks hover a scant few inches above the floor. They bob dangerously, as if experiencing their own private earthquake in midair, but they never hit the floor.

“Fitz!”

There was a professor at the Academy who once spoke to Fitz in much that tone of voice. Jemma’s never thought of it before, but she believes he was quite brutally killed even after swearing allegiance to Hydra during the uprising. So she really can’t help the morbid curiosity that has her turning to see who would dare it now.

If she had taken the glass from the Doctor, it would be her turn to drop it, because standing to one side of the hydra statue is _Skye_. Her sudden onset insanity isn’t what shocks Jemma though, it’s that her hand is outstretched towards them—towards the _glasses—_ and it becomes immediately apparent _she’s_ the one holding them up.

“We talked about this,” she says as she descends the two steps into the sitting area.

“Yeah,” the Doctor agrees petulantly, “you said it was a bad idea and I didn’t say anything.”

“Fitz!” Skye throws her hands down at her sides the way a child might while stomping their foot. The glasses clatter to the floor, unharmed.

“You’re an Inhuman,” Jemma breathes, all thoughts of the Doctor and his dangerously shifting mood taking a backseat to that reality.

Skye gestures to her and, not knowing the full extent of her powers, Jemma can’t help but flinch back. As Skye _only_ gestured, all it accomplishes is frustrating the most immediately dangerous person in the room.

“This is what I was talking about,” Skye says. “She’s freaked.”

Behind Jemma, there’s a clinking sound and then the leather couch sighs as the Doctor falls into it.

“Skye,” Jemma says, hoping to salvage this situation somehow. “I am so sorry, I-”

All at once, things coalesce and she spins on her heel to face the Doctor. He’s chugging the first glass of whiskey.

“You were testing me,” she says with a smile she hopes will smooth out any foul mood he might be in. “You suspected me of subterfuge and wanted to see whether I were the sort of person who would betray those to whom she _should_ be most loyal.”

She doesn’t believe it at all, of course. It would be a ludicrous plan and not at all Hydra’s style. It’s infinitely more likely he summoned her due to the Skye issue and she just happened to arrive when he was at the wrong end of a mood swing. It doesn’t excuse what he tried to do, but it makes sense given his penchant for violent emotional shifts.

“Why would I-?”

“Because,” she cuts in; though it’s dangerous to cut him off at the best of times, she can’t risk him getting too far down that train of thought, “my department handles the staff physicals. Naturally you would suspect me of hiding Skye’s Inhuman status, especially given she’s Grant’s partner. And you knew if I _had_ hidden it and you accused me directly, I would have an elegant lie all thought out, so you decided to come at me sideways, throw me off with your brilliant deception and use it to expose me for the duplicitous hussy I—theoretically—was. Quite ingenious, sir.”

She’s afraid she might have gone too far with that last, but her tongue likes to get away from her when she’s obfuscating. It’s a dangerous habit, Grant tells her.

The Doctor looks to Skye over her shoulder.

“Wait, what’s happening?” Skye asks. “You tested her?”

“Yes,” Jemma says, hoping enthusiasm will prove her point for her. “It was quite impressive, looking back. I was entirely fooled as to his motives. But now I-” She freezes when she’s facing Skye again. She can’t help it. Nothing has changed about her. And yet everything has. “I’m so sorry,” she says again. “And you can be assured, I will find whoever in my department hid this. They will be sussed out before week’s end, you can have no doubt of that, sir!” Her voice rises as she speaks, a necessity as she’s heading for the door, hoping to brazen her way into an exit. “I already have my suspicions and I won’t rest until I’ve found the perpetrator of this heinous-”

She almost makes it. She has the doorknob in her grasp, she can _see_ the outside hall. And then a gust of air slams the door shut.

“Simmons,” Skye says. “We’ve really got to talk.”

Jemma’s known Skye for years, of course. She’s been Grant’s partner for ages. She sat with Jemma and held her hand during the seven hours it took him to wake up after that mission in New Orleans went wrong. She comes over to their house for dinner at least twice a month. And she always calls Jemma by her first name, save for when she’s having fun at Grant’s expense by pretending to speak to him when really she’s speaking to the other Ward in the room. She has never once called Jemma by her maiden name, in large part because Jemma stopped using it long before Skye and Grant were put together. So she knows, hearing her say it now, that she’s misinterpreted something.

Skye brings her back to the sitting area and allows her to choose her own seat on the couch across from the Doctor.

“I guess we should just do it like a bandaid?” Skye asks him. He’s looking green around the gills at the moment and doesn’t answer. Skye sighs and looks to Jemma. “We’re in a computer program.”

There’s a moment of silence as Jemma expects there to be something more which will make sense of that statement and Skye clearly expects a response.

“I’m sorry, what?” Jemma asks.

“This whole world is a computer program. The real one sucks way less.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor mutters. Then again, more sincerely. “Yeah. It’s a better world. Hydra aren’t in charge—they’re practically gone—and we’re all SHIELD agents. We’re _friends_. I’m not your boss and you’re not doing dumb employee physicals. We’re partners, have been since the Academy, and-”

“Wait,” Jemma says, standing. “You’re not making any sense.” Hydra gone? SHIELD agents?

“Okay.” Skye sits beside the Doctor and rests a calming hand on his arm. “Let’s try starting at the beginning.”

Hours later, when the automatic shades have lowered to protect from the light of the setting sun, Jemma isn’t sure starting at the beginning was much help. She still can’t believe what she’s being told.

Not simply because it’s too outlandish to be believed, but because it could be a lie. She may have thought her own lie—that the Doctor used assaulting her as an attempt at exposing her as a liar—was a ridiculous play, but when held up against this?

What’s more believable? That everything she has ever known, every memory in her head, is all the result of an artfully designed computer simulation? Or that this is some scheme the Doctor has concocted to trick her into turning against Hydra so that he can hang her for it?

It would be just like him to use such a convoluted plan, simply for the sick pleasure of it.

But then there’s Skye… The Doctor doesn’t just hate Inhumans, they disgust him. Yesterday Jemma wouldn’t have believed he could tolerate one in the same room as him (unless they were on his examination table of course), let alone sit beside one and even let her touch him.

“I think,” Jemma says slowly, “I’d like to go home. I need to think this through. Perhaps for a year.”

Skye bites her lip. “I’m afraid we can’t let you do that.”

Yes, Jemma figured as much. She had to try though.

“And you can’t trust your husband,” the Doctor adds. He’s perked up some since Skye began speaking and hasn’t shown any signs of his usual moodiness. If Jemma weren’t so worried he’d snap at any moment, she’d almost say he was a pleasant conversationalist. But this advice instantly ruins any good impression she might have had.

The statement shocks Skye as much as it does Jemma.

“Husband?” Skye echoes. “You’re _married_?” Her eyes find the ring. Then, for some reason, cut again to the Doctor. “To who?”

Even after the last several hours, the question strikes her as so absurd, she can’t readily answer it. Which is just as well, seeing as the Doctor does it for her.

“To Ward,” he says, for the first time sounding like himself again. It’s not as reassuring as Jemma would hope.

“ _What!_ How long have you known this?”

“Since I…” He has the decency to squirm.

“Since you ‘tested’ her? What did he do?” She asks Jemma that last.

Jemma decides to do a test of her own. “Since he attempted to assault me.” The Doctor she knows would never have put up with such an accusation, no matter how true it was. That he only continues to squirm is a point in favor of their story being true.

Or it could all be a show and she’ll pay for her comment later.

“You did _what_?”

“It wasn’t like that! I didn’t know she was-” He waves at her, his expression souring when his eyes catch on her left hand. “I stopped when I found out about Ward.”

“I hate this place,” Skye groans and drops her head into her hands. Into them she says something that sounds to Jemma like “ _Ward?_ ”

“I don’t see what you’re so upset about,” Jemma says, feeling a bit defensive after spending hours being told she knows nothing of any real importance about the world she lives in. “You like Grant.”

Skye gapes at her, scandalized.

“You’re his partner.”

“Oh. Ew.” Skye shivers all over and the two glasses long-since left on the coffee table slide several inches back. “Okay. I need all the showers and you said you need rest. Far from here,” she adds, with a pointed look at the Doctor. “So why don’t we get you some on-site housing and we’ll pick this up tomorrow, okay?”

“I need clothes,” Jemma says. It’s a weak attempt at getting out of the building, she knows, but she can’t simply give up.

“Simmons- er. Wa- No. Nope, not happening.” She waves a hand as if wiping the half-spoken word out of the air. “You’re just gonna have to trust us. We’re in a world where literally everyone and everything is a potential enemy. This place is gonna want to keep us here so if we’re gonna find a way out, we have to stick together and keep the circle of trust small. All right?”

As the only acceptable answer is agreement, Jemma gives hers. Skye beams.

“Great. Now let’s go. We’ll see you in the morning, Fitz.”

The secretary is gone when they pass her desk and the guards at the security checkpoint don’t even acknowledge them. As the lift doors open the moment Skye presses the button, Jemma suspects it’s programmed to always return to this level to save the valuable time of those at the top of Hydra’s ladder.

She also suspects, given how quickly Skye presses the button for level nine where staff housing is located, that her story about another world is total bunk. But these are just suspicions with circumstantial evidence.

“He’s not so bad,” Skye says as the elevator descends. “Fitz, I mean. I know here he’s ‘the Doctor’ or whatever and he tried to … do whatever to you, but I’m sure it was a misunderstanding. In our world you two are kind of-”

“If you’re about to say that in your world the Doctor and I are married, I would suggest you not. Assuming you want me to believe your story, that is.” The very idea is enough to sicken her. If it’s true, does that mean that the other her failed to get away from him? Did her position as unofficial keeper hem her in so that placating him became her natural response? She’s always known he was attracted to her and can easily see a weaker version of herself giving in to first a request for a date and then the slippery slope to marriage.

She suppresses a shudder.

For several seconds, the only sounds in the car are the whirring of their travel and the squeak of Skye’s shoes as she sways up to her toes and back to her heels.

“You’re not,” she says finally. “You only had your first date like a month ago.”

Jemma has no answer for that—mostly because the only possible answer is to tell Skye she’s full of shit—but she’s saved the awkward silence when the car jerks to a stop and the lights go out.

“What the hell?”

The only light comes from the illuminated buttons for their chosen floor and the number above the door, which is flickering between eleven and ten.

“Don’t worry,” Skye says. She pushes Jemma back. “We’re gonna get out of this.”

The doors slide open before Skye reaches them and blinding light floods in. The telltale sizzle-crack of a disabler sounds. Jemma stiffens against the back wall, expecting to either be struck by its clamp and electrocuted or hear the sound of Skye suffering such a fate. Instead she hears a whoosh and a clatter, like the clamp was knocked away and fell to the floor.

“Oh, you do not want to mess with me today, guy,” Skye says. There’s another whoosh and a yell. The light tips upward and Jemma blinks away the stars in her eyes in time to see Skye trying to climb free of the lift. The car has stopped only a few feet down from aligning with the eleventh floor’s door.

“Skye!” Jemma yells.

“Stay here. I’ll take care of this guy.” She kicks aside the disabler clamp, which has fallen to the floor of the car, to give herself a better starting point from which to heave herself through the narrow opening.

The clamp looks somewhat like a smashed spider, the kind that still twitches after a first go with the rolled magazine. It’s still sparking and waiting to find somewhere to put enough voltage to knock out a horse. It’s incredibly dangerous, as not only the pincers but nearly every inch of its body are electrified. Nearly.

Jemma picks it up delicately with only two fingers and, with a whispered, “I’m sorry,” presses it to Skye’s leg. She convulses for several seconds before the charge is spent and she’s left limp and unconscious.

Almost immediately her body goes sliding out, revealing an agent in full tactical gear.

“Need a hand, baby?”

“Grant,” Jemma sighs. She gives him her hands so that he can pull her straight out and into his arms. She clings to him, ignoring the stiff edges of his gear as all the fears she’s been ignoring for the past few hours come rushing in again.

“I got you,” he says and pulls back far enough to look at her properly through his goggles. “Did he hurt you?” His gloved hand passes through her hair and she knows he’s searching for some injury as much as he’s reassuring himself she’s really here in his arms.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Good. Then we’d better hurry. Get up.”

He turns her and it becomes immediately obvious he means her to climb onto the top of the frozen lift. It’s difficult—her outfit is made for lab work, not a daring escape—but fear of being sliced in half hurries her up. Grant follows right behind and a tap of the phone attached to his wrist shuts the doors, leaving them with only its glow to see by as the lift resumes its descent.

“What do they know?” he asks. Even with one arm holding her close to his chest, he has to raise his voice to be heard over the machinery. She rests her head over his heart. She can’t hear it at all of course, but she knows it’s there, which is more than she had ten minutes ago.

She tips her head up to better aim her voice towards him. “That Skye’s an Inhuman. She has her powers and is working for the Doctor.”

“Yeah, I noticed those. But _why_? She’s gotta know he wants to kill her.”

Jemma thinks about that story they told her, about how they’re all the best of friends—her and Skye and the Doctor—in that other world. None of them are Hydra, they’re all completely loyal to SHIELD.

She can’t believe she even considered it.

“Perhaps she feels betrayed? We have been lying by omission for years.” She knows how Skye feels about secrets. Her own father was protecting Inhumans after the uprising and she turned him over to Hydra for it.

Grant’s back muscles twitch under her hands. She doesn’t know what sound he made just now, but she knows there will be plenty of time to deal with his feelings on Skye’s choices later.

“They were trying to get me to trust them. They must have suspected us both after Skye proved to be an Inhuman—I don’t know how they found out though. I think they were hoping if they made up a lie ridiculous enough, I’d out myself and lead them to SHIELD.”

It’s the most reasonable assumption. It explains everything. Only a story like “we’re living in a computer program” would be enough to explain the Doctor betraying Hydra. It would have made more sense to have Skye alone tell the story—that’s likely why she was angry when she discovered he’d summoned Jemma to his office—but his ego and his lingering dislike of Jemma meant he had to be involved in taking her down.

The elevator stops with a jolt.

“This way,” Grant says. He pushes her to the ladder at the side of the shaft. Back up they go to the next floor, where the door opens to let them out onto the first basement level. This is where agency vehicles are kept, as well as where shipments are delivered, meaning that at this time of day it’s nearly deserted.

Nearly, save for the guards rushing towards them.

“Grant,” Jemma says.

He curses—she’s known him long enough to recognize it as one, even if it is in Arabic—and barrels past her, meeting the guards halfway. They crowd around him, attacking from all sides. His tactical gear is a slim advantage, as none of them are outfitted so extensively, but he makes the most of it, allowing them to waste their energies on blows the body armor takes the brunt of.

He gets a lucky hit that sends one man reeling. The man drops at the base of the wall and slumps over. The opening gives Grant the room to lash out. Another man slams into the concrete column directly behind him. A third goes down clutching his knee and is kicked in the chest to land beside the second man. The last two Grant uses against each other, redirecting one’s momentum to throw him into the other so they both go down.

He reaches a hand back towards Jemma. “Come on.” His helmet’s gone and his face mask torn, revealing a bloody lip.

Jemma swallows down the lump in her throat and her instinctive desire to help the agents Grant left beaten on the ground. Now the fight’s done, she recognizes most of them. Montoya and Carter and Kirk. And the one at the base of the column is Porter.

But if she stays to help them, she’ll die and all of this will have been for nothing, so she takes Grant’s hand and runs.

As they approach the large doors for semi trucks to empty their deliveries onto, Grant unholsters his disabler and fires two shots, taking out the guards waiting there with ease. He slows them as they near the exit, fearful of what other attacks might be waiting outside.

It’s a good thing too or he’d have given himself a black eye on the gun that comes swinging around the edge of one of the doorways.

“Not so fast, Ward,” Trip says, keeping the gun leveled at Grant’s face. “Wards,” he corrects and throws Jemma a mocking wink.

Grant takes the opening to slam Trip’s arm into the concrete wall. The gun falls but neither man goes for it. Grant catches Trip by the throat and throws him up against the wall. Trip uses the leverage to lift his legs and kick out at Grant’s chest. He stumbles back and Trip’s on him, swinging hard and fast, blows that will cause serious damage if ever Grant fails to block them.

As the blows drive him farther back, Jemma rushes for the fallen gun. She hasn’t been in the field for years, but her specialist husband insists on taking her to the range once a month to keep her skills sharp. She comes up with the gun ready, lining up her shot.

Only to have Grant throw a punch that Trip sidesteps, swinging them both around so that Grant’s back is to her. She’s a good shot, but not good enough to trust herself to shoot over her husband’s shoulder while he’s in the middle of a fight. She lowers the gun.

Trip gives Grant a determined smile. From this far away, Jemma can’t hear what he says but she can see his lips move.

_Make it look good._

He swings. Grant catches his fist beneath his arm and uses the leverage to slam Trip into the floor. The impact is enough to knock him out.

Or enough he can fake being knocked out.

Grant breathes heavily, but finds his feet and takes Jemma’s hand again.

Outside, tires squeal. The sound has him hesitating, but only for a moment.

“That’s our ride,” he says.

A black van nearly disappears against the shadows and the passenger side window rolls down, revealing one of the Koenigs. “Get in!” he yells.

They pile into the back. There are no seats, only the mess of a mobile mechanic’s workshop, so Jemma doesn’t feel bad at all for remaining on her back after they get going. Grant seems to be of similar mind, holding her close and burying his face in her hair to breathe in the scent of her.

“It’s all right,” she says when she feels him trembling—or perhaps that’s only her delayed shaking transferring to him. Now they’re out of that building, all the fears she buried are bubbling back up.

“I thought I’d lost you.”

She shifts her hips, forcing him to roll so that they’re both on their sides facing one another. The lines of worry on his beautiful face are deeper today. She strokes them with her fingers as if that alone will smooth them away and ease his mind.

She remembers what Skye said—and didn’t say—about her fantasy of another world. One where she loves the Doctor and Grant is nothing to her.

“Never,” she promises, as much to Grant as to herself. Such a world could never exist.


End file.
